"Consider the manufacturing industry. Most Americans take it as fact that manufacturing jobs have decreased over the past 30 years. However, that is not fully accurate. Chart 1 shows manufacturing employment for union and non-union workers. Unionized manufacturing jobs fell by 75 percent between 1977 and 2008. Non-union manufacturing employment increased by 6 percent over that time. In the aggregate, only unionized manufacturing jobs have disappeared from the economy. As a result, collective bargaining coverage fell from 38 percent of manufacturing workers to 12 percent over those years."
First off, we do NOT have free trade; in fact, we haven’t had free trade ever. We have highly managed trade, we have the tariffs and quotas and restrictions you protectionists want - and it hasn’t worked too well, has it?
Now, about the loss of manufacturing jobs and unions. Is it any surprise that many of those union jobs went overseas? It was simply economically unfeasible to keep them here. It’s either close down altogether and let everything in the chain die, or move some of the production overseas and keep a good portion of the chain.
Of course, you’d rather see the whole system torn down and burn rather than reformed, right?
How do you think we can tax ourselves into prosperity?